[Thingkung Machine] Stalin, Inside The Terror Documentary

[Music] usually in the early hours of March the second 1953 the most powerful man in the world Lay Dying alone he had suffered a stroke at least 12 hours before [Music] since it can Matata visual net his guards were worried but they did not dare to go into his bedroom [Music] how could a man worshipped by millions be left to lie helpless soaked in his own urine Masha Masha all right yep [Music] I need to be near the Asian study Stalin had built an empire on a framework of Terror justifying it in the name of a political faith and through it he willed his country his government his party and his family he had even terrorized the doctors he now needed so badly [Music] now there was no one left no wife child lover or friend who was brave enough to enter the private world of Joseph Stalin he had become a victim of his own terror [Music] at the time of his death Stalin was probably the best known man on earth his popularity far outstripped that of any other world leader in the Soviet Union his image was everywhere he had become a living icon the subject of the cult of personality a hundred and sixty million people felt they knew him personally that the man they knew was an invention the real man was a mass of contradictions a dictator whose position was unassailable yet who was haunted by paranoia Stalin used terror more effectively and scientifically than any other ruler his extreme faith in a political idea would destroy tens of millions of lives yet his achievements would hold his people in awe of him to the end although millions and millions of people who detested him there were equally millions and millions of people who loved and revered him and many further millions of people who detested him at the same time mourned him when he died it is tempting to dismiss Stalin as a psychopath unable to form normal human relationships with others but family photos show a warm gentle man surrounded by daughter Sons aunts and in-laws Stalin was a passionate husband a loving father and even a committed friend despite this most of the people in these photos would be destroyed by him please without service my father was called back to Moscow he arrived on the 18th of November he got a phone call and then he left immediately and never returned Vidia me at that wash door it was a terrible time everyone wanted to destroy everyone else there will be trails denunciations and such hatred that crossed all normal boundaries it seemed to me that he had some sort of hypnotic power he could influence people and he used fear in these family relationships meant nothing to him at that time the opening of the Russian archives in recent years has finally revealed the story of the terror that Stalin created during his journey from extreme poverty to absolute power Stalin was a Georgian from the southern part of the Russian Empire the village where he was born Gouri was nearer to Baghdad that he was to st. Petersburg this was a wild country a land of tribalism and blood feuds he had been baptized yourself is a Leonov achoo gosh Willy his mother KK called him Sol Sol Sol Sol was born into extreme poverty the family rented a single room in a two room house three siblings had already died in infancy keh keh invested all of her hopes in her one surviving son she was a deeply religious woman and she dreamed that he might become a man of God but sorcerer's life was overshadowed by the violence of his father Vasari on Jewish Willie was a shoemaker and a drunk what little money he made he spent on alcohol and when he came home which was not often there was trouble his father beat his son viciously just to alleviate his own frustrations and in fact severely wounded Stalin at the age of seven in one of these beatings and the leftelbow never recovered in fact you'll see in all the photographs of Stalin this withered shorter arm and which affected the mobility of the left hand as well so he had reasons be terrified of his father and I think this instilled in him the wish for revenge and never ever in his life to be the underdog that he must always be the top dog so so could so simply have disappeared into the squalor of 19th century Georgia but remarkably the young boy was prepped from obscurity by a powerful patron Yakko beg Nitesh Willy was the onset of kaykai's prayers perhaps in more ways than one it was rumored that the wealthy merchant was actually sources true father the egg natascha village treated him and his mother as family and he would protect them all his life Jerusalem at Solon his Godfather Yakko beg Natasha Bailey was our closest relative and I know that Stalin would run back after classes straight to them and they received him as a relative because Yakov was his Godfather [Music] father or Godfather yeah cops patronage meant KK could now groom so so for his religious calling entry into the priesthood would admit so so to one of the educated elites in the Tsarist Empire so she brought him up with this feeling that he could do no wrong and of course a man you know who is here I worshiped by his mother believes he is a hero the Orthodox Church underpinned the authority of the imperial family its priests encouraged millions of peasants to revere the Tsar they urged them to accept the ties that bound them to the land as if they were still medieval serfs this was the prize which Peggy had in mind for her only son who was already showing signs of talent this is an exceptional child and the super intelligence the super sensitivity of this damaged child when this was a boy who could learn who learned to read and write much earlier than other children and he you know other children it's sort of 8 or 9 were just perfecting their Georgian language for example but we know that he told he he told people about how he himself had learned four or five to read and write very well Sousa was brought up speaking Georgian his native language but Georgia was part of the Russian Empire and at school he was forced to read and write Russian it was also a land of factions and vendetta's and he grew up learning to be a fighter although he was the smallest boy in his year he was still the toughest and at the age of 14 he won a scholarship to the orthodox seminary in tbilisi the road from poverty to priesthood lay before him but it would be a harsh journey when he arrived there however the discipline imposed on him by his priests who were his teachers was very very severe including beatings including solitary confinement the Stalin beating was the worst of punishments that you could inflict on anybody and later on in his life when somebody asked him about punishment he said beat them beat them it's the worst you can do to them the seminary at Tbilisi was not just a center for studying Christianity here some of the brightest minds in Georgia were able to exchange and debate radical new ideas they read Darwin and now they found the works of Karl Marx these had only recently been published in Russia the releasable that doggone Sibley's see there was only one copy of Marx's Das Kapital it was handwritten but they got hold of it and they used to read it at night and of course the seminary found out about it the seminary authorities would have been worried by so so's flirtation with the new ideas the peacock elegance of Nicholas the second court was a glittering disguise behind it lay an absolutist monarchy which had made few concessions to the ideas of democracy taking root elsewhere in Europe it was a brittle regime which stifled protests using a network of secret police and the threat of exile to Siberia the twenty-year-old Sosa was entranced by Marx's prediction that the Czar's would be swept away in a class war he turned his back on his mother's dream of a career in the priesthood so so had found a higher calling the sort of Marxism that attracted him was the Marxism that was going to take on the Russian Empire that was going to bring Czar ISM crashing down and Stalin threw out his young manhood saw Zarate's on as being an order that brought about political oppression and economic exploitation and national hatreds he wanted all of that to be eliminated conversion to a new faith demanded a new identity so so was dead he would call himself Koba after a Georgian Robin Hood style hero Cobra the revolutionary had a mission to spread the new gospel to the urban workers who had most to gain from Marxism in the Black Sea port of batouly he organized a huge demonstration which ended in a riot 15 were killed and many more were wounded Koba the revolutionary had been bloodied he had his first police record on the 9th of July 1903 he was sentenced to three years exile in Siberia if the Seminary in Tbilisi had been a school for revolutionaries Siberia would prove to be his university here he met a group of hardline activists many of whom would become leaders in the Russian Revolution oftentimes they were alla like reading holidays where a group of these revolutionaries would find themselves reading books and he's very boring villages in Siberia every now and then they decided to escape and then would set off a yump to the local train station and they were only guarded often by a local old John Daum who kept a pretty unclose watch on them Cobar could easily slip away from his exile back to GBC here he had fallen in love with a local girl Cato Spa needs a sister of one of his revolutionary comrades but unlike her brother Carter was surprisingly conventional I think he fell in love with his mother she was deeply religious this this very beautiful girl that he married and she didn't believe in politics either it was it was his mother koba's new love would draw him back into a world that he had only recently left carto and his mother wanted a church wedding remarkably he agreed but his new relationship would quickly be tested by his life as a revolutionary he wanted it to be his buh-bye as he called them his his house wife who kept traditional Georgian house for him but on the other hand he was always gone he was never there he was always on the road in secret meetings trips abroad and so on the river life of a revolutionary was the opposite to that of a sort of good husband and she Cato had a very lonely life Carter had to rely on her family rather than on her new husband now the certainties which bounded Stalin and Cotto's worlds were to be challenged the year was 1905 and in 1905 of course Nicholas a second almost was overthrown strikes broke out in all of the major cities peasants started moving against their landlords it came very close to a full revolution so these young revolutionaries who had read their marx had been rather bookish had been drawn to doctrines of total change suddenly became big political figures in their own right the unsuccessful rising created new heroes for Coppa within weeks of marrying carto he left for Finland on forged papers to meet vladimir Ilyich Lenin what he found surprised him I was expecting to see the Mountain Eagle of our party a great man not only politically but if you will physically for I had formed for myself an image of Lenin as a giant stately and imposing what was my disappointment when I saw the most ordinary looking man below middle height distinguished from ordinary mortals by nothing literally nothing in Stalin Lenin found exactly what he needed Lenin was existing in in the world of bourgeois intellectuals exile sitting in Viennese coffee houses discussing dialectical materialism what he needed and Stalin was ruthless tough energetic organizers in Russia itself men who were willing to do anything for the cause men have nothing to lose and Stalin was exactly that and that's why Lenin called him my wonderful Georgian Stalin was willing took for example to organize the bank robberies the X pros the expropriations they were called Lenin was impressed by Stalin's ruthlessness and organizational Flair but others in the party were less comfortable with Comrade Koba in a world poisoned by suspicion one incident cast particular doubt on Stalin's loyalties for years the Okhrana the Czarist police have been searching for a secret underground printing press known to be operating in a suburb of tbilisi revolutionary pamphlets were flooding the factories also bombs and ammunition were known to be stored there in 1906 the aprende acting on an anonymous tip-off raided the press and arrested several of koba's fellow revolutionaries and possibly rivals koba himself just happened to be out of town many suspected that Cobra was the informer and an agent for the Okhrana [Music] people were round him with double agents single agents quadruple agents of Stalin himself was probably one of those he didn't mean they weren't absolute Marxist fanatics it just meant that they might portray people who who irritated them get rid of a rival and make a deal maybe to get less exile but it didn't change the fact that they were fanatics in 1907 whilst on the run he heard that Cato had given birth to a boy Yakov he managed to get home but not to celebrate weakened by the birth Cato had succumbed to tuberculosis [Music] when she died what he said was all warm feeling for people died with her she melted my stony heart and it was as if nobody else could ever do that again so it's almost a betrayal that she dies a betrayal of that that love that you know he'd opened to her and she died it's very complicated he is a very complex person there's absolutely no doubt Yakov Stalin's first son would be almost 20 before he'd see his father again he abandoned him to the care of cutters sisters and returned to his life of revolutionary action within weeks he was back in prison the hardened man a fellow prisoner Semyon dearest jack recalls nothing would ever upset stolen when executions were taking place and all the others were shaken he slept soundly or quietly studied Esperanto on one occasion after a major riot the politicals were made to run the gauntlet of soldiers rifle butts Stalin walked through the ordeal calmly and bravely reading a book Stalin proved his usefulness to the Bolshevik caused by his diligent work as a bank robber and agitator his reward was a post on the Party Central Committee and for this he would leave his quiet life in exile he returned as in Petersburg traveling under a new name from now on he would be Stalin the Man of Steel behind the facade of some Petersburg's imperial splendor seized an underworld of murderous revolutionary groups dedicated to overthrowing the Czar's stalin slipped quickly into the heart of this network of dissidents he found a temporary home with a trusted family of radicals the alleluia they are flat not far from the Czar's Winter Palace was a safe house for subversives Stalin had already met the family in Georgia Sergei the father was married to Olga a restless woman notorious for her affairs now Stalin became intimately involved with Sergei and his children yeah beasts concerts grandfather used to hide revolutionaries in his flat the police would come and the children would be afraid I know she did well yes can you imagine the children knowing that grandfather and everyone else could go to prison watching just so very often he would save these revolutionaries and that's why grandfather had lots of friends among them and the first thing they would ask was other 2 exits the back door as well as the front door good then we'll stay here the police always came to the front door so they could escape through the back one but escape wasn't an option when in 1913 Kobra was yet again picked up by the Okhrana and returned to exile this time it was a remote camp beyond the Arctic Circle where he would remain for four miserable year from here he wrote wistfully to the Alleluias in the paradise of st. Petersburg I should be happy if he would send me postcards with views of nature in this forsaken spot in nature is reduced a stark ugliness in some of the river and in winter the snow just a year into his exile the First World War broke out Russia mobilized millions of troops against Germany Stalin was called up but with his damaged arm he was found to be unfit for military service so he escaped the catastrophic defeats and harsh conditions which began to undermine the Tsarist regime in February 1917 the Tsar was overthrown when the news came that the Tsar had abdicated they were totally taken by surprise and the cool stay then set off from their exile on this train journey to some Petersburg and a very exciting train journey it must have been with their hope of power revolution and the creation of that perfect socialist paradise power was now in the hands of a provisional government Lenin's faction the Bolsheviks formed part of the official opposition solon on his return came directly to this house it was a barracks for party workers upstairs with the editorial offices of Pravda the Bolshevik newspaper Stalin immediately took over as editor but instead of following the Leninist line on an immediate end to the war and the seizure of power stalin went badly off message he would soon taste Lenin's Roth when Lenin arrived in saint-petersburg Stalinist history recalls how with great joy the two leaders of Bolshevism met after their long separation in fact Lenin got off the train cursing the editor of Pravda Stalin was given a telling-off for his weak attitude despite this he was content to follow Lenin the real hero of the revolution but he loathed the intellectual arrogance of the silver-tongued Leon Trotsky trotsky's brilliance far eclipsed Stalin in those early years Stalin was not one of the great orator x' his Georgian accent told against him he was nervous about giving big political speeches but what he was good at was at editing newspapers organizing the revolution within the Central Committee Stalin's role lacked glory but it was practical he was Lenin's secret factotum he was useful to Lenin and because he was lesser-known to the police than say Trotsky Trotsky was a European figure already he was famous and that was only true of Lenin and Trotsky and not of most of the others Lenin now approved of Stalin skills in editing Pravda and he had other strengths on the 3rd of July the Bolsheviks tried to seize power for themselves but the plot backfired Trotsky was arrested and a warrant was issued for Lenin Stalin the quiet man plucked Lenin from danger and took him to the Alleluia safehouse Nym lenin was at my grandfather's flight for about 36 hours his beard had to be shaved off and so to begin with my grandmother started to shave his beard Stalin said get away you can't do it let me and so he finished shaving him he shaved his beard off and then they put my grandfather's coat on them and rammed a cap on his head and looking like this he was escorted to the railway station Stalin the master of misinformation successfully disguised the agitator who would become one of the most recognizable men in history Lenin's second chance to hijack the revolution came in October 1917 Russia was in crisis as her army crumbled before the Germans the Bolsheviks harnessed the discontent of soldiers and sailors in st. Petersburg and mounted a coup against the provisional government they surrounded the Winter Palace with artillery and forced the government out of power Stalin was immediately offered a job as a People's Commissar in Lenin's government he later joined the inner circle of power the Politburo for a secretary he chose one of the daughters of his old friends they are lilou youths the 16 year old nadezhda she was a little girl when she met starling and they had terrific fun with him they went sleigh rides that Stalin used to read to them he would read checkoff short stories to them and they would laugh a lot apparently Nadia was a very boisterous rather mischievous child and liked to play jokes and so-so would laugh and joke with them and I mean other times they found him quite solemn and introverted but he also did have this humorous side which they really loved Stalin was old enough to be no dodged as father but she was entranced by him and she shared his revolutionary passion when the encroaching Germans forced the new government to move to the safety of Moscow nadezhda went with him here Lenin's government was in trouble although they had signed a humiliating peace with the Germans in 1918 they faced new enemies forces loyal to the Tsar were massing in corners of the old Russian Empire Lenin had to defend his revolution ruthlessly using what he called war communism and the terror tactics once harnessed in the French Revolution there was enormous resistance to Lenin and the Bolsheviks even from the working class that meant that he wasn't going to be an easy revolution at all but there was going to be civil war [Music] Civil War would use Stalin's talents as an organizer an agitator who could push men into desperate action the skills he had honed in orchestrating bank robberies now had real value there was a problem in the south essential grain supply simply weren't getting through to the cities stalin left Moscow on a train packed with militia to sort it out his destination was the city of Saracen Stalin his top people learnt to be killers and they learnt the glamour of match our expeditions into the countryside riding shotgun in armored trains with detachments of rum check our secret policeman or Red Guards riding out that to execute massive numbers of aristocrats or but bourgeois or whatever and in these expeditions they felt they were living that the power and glamour of revolution abroad Stalin's war train thundering south was his 16 year old secretary nadezhda her brother Fyodor was also on the train returning to his carriage from the dining saloon Fyodor heard his sister cry out [Music] the others get bamboo allegedly Stalin started to rape her I read this rubbish somewhere but really she was very much in love with him why would you rape her she was so much in love with him Glaucus nadezhda and Stalin were man and wife from that day on their Bolshevik marriage would be solemnized in a bloodbath as around them dozens of people were being executed he behaved with the macho violence of a Bolshevik in command he secured the grain when he had prisoners on a barge he sunk the barge with all prisoners on deck I mean nothing was too much for Stalin no no excessive violence was too much in order to make sure that that muskegon it's grade azureus and didn't fall for the first time he had absolute power and he learned how to use it he learnt one of the ruling rules of his life one man one problem no man no problem in 1921 Stalin masterminded the Bolshevik seizure of his homeland Georgia which had declared itself independent of Russia Stalin said we must draw a white-hot iron across this Georgian land his swaggering behavior led him to clash fiercely with his Georgian Bolshevik comrades Nadia understood Stalin's harsh world she too was a committed Bolshevik and she recognized that revolution was called for blood back in Moscow Stalin and nadezhda lived in the Kremlin the former home of the Tsar's in true communist fashion we began living with Stalin annotations a caver and several others - in a communal flat with one kitchen for several families they were comfortable enough and the comrades rule friends and said they didn't want to part and their wives were all friends - so they carried on living there and even though there was one kitchen you had your own flat so you could go to your own private room if you wanted then in 1921 Vasily was born and the flat became too small for Starlin so he had to move other Stalin now had a family he would not allow it to compromise his revolutionary zeal a letter recently unearthed in one of the state archives shows how determined he was to prove his proletarian credentials it's to the head of state Kalinin and it's complaining bitterly I've moved into my new flat in the Kremlin and I'm absolutely furious to discover that somebody has gone and bought a whole lot of new smart furniture for my flat this is directly against my orders I'm very angry about this I gave express orders that I was to have old furniture in my flat more than that he writes find the culprit and punish him and he signs off with communist greetings J Stalin both Stalin and Nadia in the first two decades of the 20th century had very similar ideals which were social justice and equality and fair working conditions and so on Nadia was one of the first emancipated women women got equal rights at the Revolution and she went for them she wanted education she wanted independence she wasn't going to change her name when she got married as leader of the party Lenin was burdened by a huge workload he was relying on Stalin more and more a new job was created for Starling general secretary of the Bolshevik Party he was free to write his own Job Description it would make him the most powerful man in the party the Civil War left the country in ruins Transport had broken down food was no longer reaching the cities so Lenin relaxed the policy of collectivizing land and seizing grain let the peasant sell their grain let the free market unlock the shortages so this was a big retreat from Bolshevism Lenin was the ultimate Machiavellian pragmatist and he argued this very hard this had to be done but a lot of the Bolshevik young Bolsheviks believed this was a compromise too far and then it threatened the revolution and that one day they'd have to deal with the peasant problem but nonetheless Lenin got the NEP as it was called brought in Lenin had exhausted himself in holding the revolution together in May 1922 he suffered the first of a series of strokes over the next few months he recovered some of his former strength but he became concerned that he would no longer be able to control his increasingly power colleague comrades darling as Lenin weakened to the winter of 1922 his fears about Stalin grew in December Stalin persuaded the Central Committee to make him responsible for Lenin's medical care now he had control over the man he had once served he changed when he understood he could become the leader it's probably the psychology of somebody who wants power who loves power and knows how to use power that's how he was his yes meant yes and his no meant no he didn't say he built an invisible wall around the leader forbidding access to him and strictly controlling contact with others he then heard that Lenin had dictated a memo to his archenemy Trotsky Lenin's devoted wife krupskaya was acting as his secretary Starly now telephoned her crips kaya's account to the extraordinary conversation would almost destroy him tovarisch Couture appearances essential Nadya treats at leas party Romania in Syria supports in a row the blueshift civil nearly straight idea was or chambers who knew last year Yahshua's nikto establish an account by covering some of the canto onion focus abilities now does read that when always here's about starring the highly controlled Iceman when in fact he also had this tempestuous fiery Georgian temper he couldn't control and this is an example of a man who's supposed to be this great political machine but in fact at the vital moment he loses his temper and almost loses everything Stalin had gone to fine abusing krupskaya Lenin was now dictating what he called his testament to the party he was already incensed by Stalin's aggressive behavior towards his party colleagues in Georgia when he heard about the phone call to his wife he added a devastating condemnation of Stalin is a communist solution pushed him dualistic game check party the Testament was sealed in an envelope and given to a krupskaya to be opened after Lenin's death one of his secretaries however leaked the fact to Stalin that Lenin meant to finish him it was to be done at the next Communist Party Congress in 1923 by Trotsky acting on Lenin's behalf but the wily Stalin offered Trotsky a political concession in return for temporarily dropping the issue Trotsky fell for it Stalin was reprieved and the chance to halt his grim progress was lost forever [Music] lenin had foreseen the danger in an all-powerful Stalin the protege would now go on to eclipse the worst excesses of his master [Music] in a Swahili I remember we were taken to the building where Lenin's body was lying I remember that we went up the stairs and that everything was covered in black cloth halfway up the stairs two boys were crying and then all the little children passed by the body we didn't really know what was going on but we knew there's something horrible had happened [Music] at the funeral Starlin read an extraordinary evangelical tribute to his leader comrade Lenin ordained us to hold high and keep pure the great title of member of the party we vow to viet we shall fulfill thy commandment Starly would now use Lenin's name to destroy those who stood between him and absolute power there was to be a collective leadership but his main rival was Trotsky the darling of the party for 20 years Stalin had lived in Trotsky shadow his fame as the charismatic orator and leader of the victorious Red Army during the Civil War matched that of Lenin himself Trotsky had described Stalin as a gray Buick rat a mediocrity it was a fatal underestimation of Stalin's political skill and of his unswerving hatred Stalin now had control of the party machinery he would use it over the next six years to destroy Trotsky and all his other rivals henceforth Trotsky's name would become synonymous with heresy [Music] Starlin won the support of the party by elevating Lenin to the status of a hero and a prophet the man who had tried to destroy him would now be used to justify Stalin's vision of the future he immediately took over the intellectual side of Lenin and he controlled it absolutely and he decided what of Lenin's work was published or what wasn't and his environment of Lenin and displaying Lenin in the mausoleum was the deliberate creation of a religion of Bolshevism and of a religious symbol for Bolshevism which which worked by 1929 Russia had only just matched the level of industrialization achieved before the First World War as the increasingly powerful general secretary Stalin embarked on a mission to make Russia leap forward half a century in the space of just a few years he wanted to make the Soviet Union into an industrial Colossus and a military power to be reckoned with on the European mainland he wanted Soviet modernity he wanted an end to the old Russia of the peasant the village of the Christian faith and he wanted virtually an industrialized countryside to take the place of many evil Muscovy that he so much detested in the cities darling mobilised an army of enthusiastic young communists to help crush anyone who might oppose his plans they flooded out of Moscow and st. Petersburg into the countryside their mission was to drag the peasants into the 20th century if the peasants didn't cooperate they would be destroyed [Music] the master of propaganda now showed town-dwellers in films such as this how it was a richer class of peasants or cool acts that were responsible for food shortages by hoarding grain lists of the guilty were published he expropriated their property and he deported most of them to Siberia for at least five years bolsheviks squads now seized thousands of tons of grain across the countryside the peasants would starve for those who dared to hoard grain Stalin had a solution a new law protocol 111 they called it the five-year law you could be shot for stealing five grains of corn Stalin had unleashed his army of Bolsheviks against the peasants but now the situation was spiraling out of control he was worried but he imposed his will regardless the deliberateness of the violence and the Tarot is fascinating we now know from documents that they divided the peasants into three categories category one to be shot instantly category two to be deported to camps the gulags categories free to be deported into exile and gradually this sort of expanded into a civil war against the countryside and it was done by tens of thousands of young workers from from the cities who went out into the countryside and did this and saw the people starving and saw the people being shot but they believed it was right because it was the way to paradise it was the way to heaven on earth the worker's paradise it was all worthwhile [Music] hundreds of thousands of peasants were deported into the eastern wastelands they were making the same journey the young Koba himself had made many times but they were not expected to return they were destined for camps where they would be starved and worked to death in conditions of absolute brutality [Music] for most exile would become another word for the death symptoms the freezing tundra swallowed hundreds of thousands of families Stalin executed a radical term the great turning quarter the Stalin Revolution and a Stalin Revolution was in fact a much more dramatic change in the life of the Russian people than even the Lanning Revolution of 1917 it changed everything of course there was resistance and the resistance was from Stalin's sort of partners in government Bukharan and the rightists and Stalin easily defeated them and they they recanted and agreed to follow the party line miss darling believed that any number of victims any number of human casualties were worth it in order to achieve deferred paradise the deferred paradise of socialism between 1929 and 1933 up to five million people perished instead of creating communal farms they were now digging communal graves Stalin suppressed any mention of this in the cities even though almost 30 million people were starving yep I echo love Craig I went to the city of Kharkov I was in a good compartment and when I opened the window like this there was a horrible famine going on outside I saw on the railway platform on people with swollen stomachs who were starving and when my mother told Stalin he said it's an illusion she's only a child and he could say things like that Stalin's behavior was beginning to scare people his wife nadezhda in particular she wasn't meant to know about this but of course she picked it up from her friends in the Academy who used to go out to the countryside and they would come back and tell her what was happening and Stalin wasn't telling her so this caused you know in enormous distressed her and of course division in in the marriage on verse 13 eg he was an oriental man and they have different ideas they think that women are weak but in fact she was very strong and probably the two characters clashed and of course they had rouse about it again yes no Anu really gun for you it certainly 1931 according to her sister Anna she was packing her bags she was going to finish her studies at the academy she was going back to Leningrad as it now was to live with her father and set up her own career and take her children because she'd had enough Stalin now controlled the destiny of millions but not that of his own family in 1926 a daughter Svetlana had been born Stalin doted on her but not so on the boys his first son Yakov had now joined them in the Kremlin but Stalin's constant bullying of the teenager had driven him in desperation to shoot himself he survived much to his father's disgust huh sneered Stalin he can't even shoot straight [Music] Stalin's wife was equally unsympathetic to Yakov scry for attention she had her own concerns Roger clearly had psychological severe psychological problems I mean Svetlana herself said her mother was schizophrenic star Molotov said she was psychopathic but the point was that she was a hysteric nadezhda could no longer cope with the pressures of living with Stalin or with the news of what was happening in the country [Music] nadezhda Sergeyevna Vasily and I went to red squares and sunna - sir well maybe in 15 or 20 minutes literally started to moan oh my head down my head she clutched her head and literally started to moan and a couple of minutes later I went home the next day nadezhda saw the children vasily and svetlana for the last time that evening they were having dinner with a Molotov and the barouche alerts the Voorhis she loves as usual were holding their revolution party after all the parade's and so on down the table was generally a Gore office wife Galina and Stalin began to flirt with her in the clumsy way that he did fly with people drunkenly by tossing balls of bread at her that was his sort of way of flirt and he did it with children to entertain them to coarse and clumsy it certainly was he didn't notice his young wife's lovely dress and her new hairdo he didn't notice anything about her suddenly there was a toast and she didn't drink it's delicious you're meeting nice Teemo and then she got up suddenly and ran out but molotovs wife followed her out they walked round the Kremlin and they talked and she said why does darling have to flirt with all these women he's flirted with Jager over the actress at the dinner he's flirted with the hairdresser in the Kremlin who he may be having an affair with and they agreed between them that men were men they were silly things but Polina told us she said Stalin's under immense pressure you can't put him under more pressure when he's already fighting a civil war in the countryside no one knows why when she left Polina molotov quiet she then worked herself into a frenzy when she was in her room she got out the little pistol that her brother had brought back from Berlin and then she wrote a letter attacking Stalin personally and politically [Music] when he stood by her open coffin in a sense to take his party from her he said she went away as an enemy and he turned around and walked away and that is according to his daughter Svetlana call majesty over the coffin stood in the room surrounded by people Stalin approached the coffin and wept what's more he wept so strongly that he was shaking all over it was absolutely clear he couldn't control himself it was the most horrible thing that could have happened to him such grief Vasily was clutching at him daddy don't cry daddy don't cry please don't cry [Music] for Stalin it was a huge betrayal she had publicly said by leaving a letter that she thought Stalin's policies were wrong and she agreed with boo Karen's ideas and that she found it intolerable and that she couldn't live with it and she would commit suicide so not only was it a personal tragedy it was political betrayal and it was on that level principally that he took it [Music] Nadezhda as death marked the end of what for Stalin had been a relatively calm and secure period of domestic life the space that she left she filled with his affection for Svetlana whom he now referred to as the lady of the house she was even allowed to appear at Politburo dinners for mail company always important to him he had his old friend Kirov Kirov when he wasn't in his office in Leningrad spent more and more time at Stalin's dacha Kirov took the place of nadir in a way as his comfort and his dear friend for example he will only go to the baths with um with Kirov among his political fraternity he would only take his clothes off with Kirov's company for example he would only swim with Kirov this relationship was very close and yet there was severe political tensions in it and one of the tensions was that at the 17th Congress in 1934 a group of Bolsheviks disenchanted after the horrors of collectivization planned to overthrow Stalin and place Kirov as needed the party Kirov was Stalin's closest friend and now suddenly he was also his closest rival and a serious threat on the first of December 1934 at key Roth's office in Leningrad a lone gunman stalked the corridor little exam knock that word suddenly there was a telephone call it was an intercity call you could tell by the ringing Stalin took the receiver and as my mother told me he turned to pale though his face went completely strange he put down the receiver even said Carole has been killed I'm going to Leningrad he left for Leningrad with his own court of judges prosecutors and executioner's within hours of finding out about Carol's death Stalin had drafted the first two december law which gave him the power to essentially shoot anyone accused of terrorism very quickly on arrival he personally interrogated Kirov success in Nikolaev Stalin claimed that he implicated the followers of another leading member of the old Bolshevik guard Sanofi F Nikolai F was quickly executed then he had the assassins wife brother and sister-in-law shot without trial he identified and arrested enough he EPS supporters and had them all shot [Music] his old colleagues enough F and command F were seized in Moscow it isn't known whether or not Stalin ordered key rocks death but he had drafted the law allowing the arrests and executions within two hours of hearing the news [Music] the first two december law was to be the basis of his personal dictatorship it was also to be the foundation of the terror of the thirties [Music] within a year over a hundred thousand people in Leningrad alone would be imprisoned or shortened in time most of the 2,000 delegates who'd attended the 17th Party Congress would be killed too many had voted in favor of Kirov if the party wouldn't follow Stalin he would build one that would the initial trial of sin ffs and come in F was a sham but after being promised light sentences they confessed he'd brought the Georgian vendetta the Caucasian the Kaizen blood-feud he had brought to Moscow to Muscovy he'd brought it north and he was very much determined to destroy physically destroy the people who had opposed him who would trust him and who he had not forgive him he is a Georgian and the Georgians have a history a very bloody history of ruthlessness and you didn't just annihilate your enemy stamped on his grave in 1936 at the first of the infamous show trials before the international press coming Ephron's anafi f were retried found guilty and executed despite Stalin's promises that their lives will be spared the terror spread in a series of shockwaves throughout the Soviet Union in the midst of it all Stalin went with his children to visit his mother KK now 75 she was looked after on Stalin's behalf by the head of the Georgian NKVD Lavrentiy Beria KK knew what was going on Brigadier LeapPad the rules Frances visitor who knew about arrest in Georgia and Russia and they would complained to her because she was his mother she didn't like it and when he came to say his final goodbyes to her I forget why she died I forget what illness but she was very old variable so I masculine she told him son it would have been better if you had been a priest [Music] a man who could have been a priest was in fact playing God [Music] it was a religious terror essentially I believe Stalin himself said that we had to kill people because they have lost faith people were killed not for their conscious sins but for their unconscious ones for the fact that they might sin they might turn against the project they might show a lack of faith in Stalinism in Bolshevism Stalin took a close personal interest in the terror as it assumed a life of its own he actually decided to kill people like industrial production targets so for example Stalingrad was told you also shoot to say 5,000 people and exile 20,000 people so the amazing thing that we've discovered about stardom in the last sort of few years is that the terror was organized deliberately from the center and that Stalin and his and his leaders didn't care who they killed it was done by quota by numbers and not even by name in one year arrests for counter revolutionary crimes increased tenfold but Russian state archives revealed the Stalin's still had time to pick out individuals for destruction he's a chilling document that comes from the height of the terror was 22nd of November 1938 it's headed top-secret and it's a very very laconic very Stalinist message comrade malankov Mozgov in must be arrested J Stalin very simple Mozgov in who was a top official in the Comintern and annex czech issed at secret policeman was indeed arrested and shot very soon after this note Stalin's orders were carried out by a troika a traveling court that simply read out the charges and supervised the executions the science Marines our researcher will mimic as an apostate it was worship in this manner will recover consciously the Lavanya new petition recover previous to respond nanana Midland theatre Vedic ability to do so trees were small [Music] Stalin personally signed for execution almost 400 lists of names totaling about 40,000 people during the terror around 700 thousand men and women were sentenced to death on the 12th of December 1937 alone Stalin and Molotov approved 3167 death sentences before breaking to go to the cinema [Music] Starlin had killed most of those who had been part of the revolution he now turned his attention to another of his former allies one of the original Bolshevik leaders Nikolai Bukharin the Karan is probably the most charming and one of the most gifted and one of this unusual of the Bolshevik leaders I mean Lenin called him the darling of the party and he was he was delightful but Karin would be forced to endure the humiliation of a public show trial he knew he was never going to escape the condemned cell but in his last letter to Stalin he appealed to his old friendship and showed that he still loved the cause even if not the man if I am to receive the death sentence then I employ you by all you hold dear not to have me shot let me drink poison in my cell instead but I am preparing myself mentally to depart from this vale of tears and there is nothing in me toward all of you toward the party and the cause but enormous and boundless love for that reason I embrace you in my mind farewell forever and remember kindly your wretched Nikolai Bukharin [Music] now no one was safe no one was closer to Stalin than his long serving secretary Alexander Post clearly shot no one that is except for screenshots wife piranha Slava according to her daughter Natalia she was having an affair with darling one day in 1939 she vanished on Thomas turned up a whole nother my father thought she'd gone to the dacha so he phoned but she wasn't there in the morning he our Stalin about it and Stalin said I don't know anything past barrier barrier said that she had links with Trotskyism and she was therefore an enemy of the people she had been arrested two years later she would be shot but before her death prescribed a chef had already taken a new wife his first wife had ceased to exist and still post gravy Schaaf served his leader papa couldn't do anything about it she was accused of links with Trotskyism Trotsky was an ideological enemy and besides Stalin had his own score to settle with Trotsky so when you were accused of that there was no hope of pardon you have to understand he had two little girls to look after I think he did it for us now these two faded photographs are all that remain of branislav ' shocked Natalia's mother and perhaps Stalin's mistress de Blasio shown in Milan my nanny told me that when I was little Papa was looking through some photographs it must have been 1939 I saw a picture of mother and I went mama mama and he burst into tears and left the room the circle of terror slowly closed in on everyone tightening and tightening until it touched his own family he'd reached the family album including the Georgian brother and sister-in-law of his first wife Cotto's fan I'd say the civilities were locked up she in a camp and here in the prison and he was shot there and when she heard about it she died but before she died she wrote a letter on a pillowcase and sent it to my mother my mother wrote it down on paper and showed it to Stalin and when he read it he said Eugenia don't you ever do anything like that again and she could see by the look on his face that she'd done something really stupid you see because she understood that he'd crossed them out of his life and they didn't exist for him anymore when he put people in prison he just forgot about them what kind of a man is it that can do that [Music] there was no clear end to the terror no specific date but by mid 1938 Stalin had killed almost all of the 1934 Central Committee enough of his generals to undermine the army and enough industrial bosses to have brought the country to near standstill those he hadn't killed were rotting in the camps he had almost finished it was time to blame somebody he chose the head of his secret police Nikolay years off yet offers the perfect person he's now behaving like a sort of cliche of a vampire living at night permanently drunk no one knows where he is and he's still killing people crazily so star in very subtly turns against him brings up at very trusted very tough and much more intelligent man from Georgia Lavrentiy Beria the man he chose to deliver the final coup de Grasse was the georgian secret policeman who had been looking after his mother barrier had yourself arrested and shot on the 4th of february 1940 the terror was very nearly over on the 20th of August that here a Soviet agent finally tracked down Trotsky in Mexico and plunged an icepick into the back of his head Starlin had once said there is nothing sweeter in the world than to plan revenge on an enemy see it executed and then go to bed to sleep peacefully by 1940 he had fulfilled his dream by turning Russia into a great European power and he believed that he had neutralized any threat from Nazi Germany by signing a non-aggression pact with Hitler in the area as of June the 22nd 1941 Hitler's forces burst onto Russian soil along a 500-mile front in the first day they shot down 2,000 Soviet planes and slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Red Army soldiers it was the greatest miscalculation of his life the first few hours after operational Barbarossa's start were terrible ones for Stalin he refused to believe that what was happening really was happening and he refused initially to allow his generals to retaliate against the German armed forces he started to speak in a very very low voice he he was clearly mentally shattered by what had happened Stalin pulled himself together and took control of Russian defences but after a week of ever-worsening disaster he suddenly withdrew from the Kremlin to his dacha it was half a crisis of confidence and half a test of loyalty for the Politburo they come out to the dacha all of them cap in hand and he stiffens when they arrive because he thinks they have come to arrest him he's frightened and Nkosi in the other in any other circumstances he'd be doing the arresting but in this case the buck stops with Stalin he waits there stiffly and he says what have you come for and they say we've come to ask you to come back and and command the armies take control on July the 3rd Stalin broke his silence to make a speech to the nation his delivery was described as dull and colorless [Music] Stalin had always generated extraordinary myths and rumors but some Russians believed his crisis of confidence at the outbreak of the war may have run far deeper which isn't China why fight chance I met with a very religious person at a church near Moscow and somebody had told him that I knew starlings grandchildren I said yes I'm Tina egg Natasha viele he said I know this name egg Natasha feeling I believe you were related to Starling and as we passed the church he drew me aside for conversation he said do you know that Starling took confession I said Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin I was amazed he confessed in 1941 43 45 and 48 he made these confessions to my father and he told me that his father took the secret of the confession with him to the grave but he had told his son remember Starling took confession four times [Music] is it possible that the great revolutionary Marxist had resumed his dialogue with God in the crisis of 1941 [Music] he was clearly shattered by what had happened however the idea that he went into psychological meltdown is wholly untrue he he quickly gathered his strength again soon he was barking at his generals and bullying his political subordinates in the way he had done in recent years he took hold of the State Committee for defense and headed it he took hold of military strategy he killed the general who had been in charge of the Western Front blaming him for the problems for the catastrophe that he himself had caused by his own misjudgment so he quickly reasserted himself Stalin ran the war as he had run everything else single-handedly and without mercy in August 1941 he issued order to 7'o forbidding any Red Army soldier to allow himself to be taken captive serious punishment awaited Soviet prisoners of war should they return from captivity retreat was prohibited Stalin left his forces in no doubt as to who they should fear most him or Hitler no sooner had the war started than Yakov Stalin's eldest son was captured by the Germans realising his identity they offered to return him in exchange for one of their top generals Stalin who had famously pronounced there are no Russian prisoners of war only traitors replied I have no son called Yakov new yes a formula Gingka Adina's nikumans roasting cherubic Marino's I remember the day when a person bought me an American or an English magazine with a picture of a soldier hanging dead on barbed wire and the caption said my father Jacob Stalin even usable and a person stole my ideas twist to Yakov Stalin Stalin decreed that the wives and families of prisoners should be treated as traitors and his own daughter-in-law was no exception Yakov wife was arrested and Stalin's only grandchild four-year-old ghoulia was left without parents this doesn't even surprise gulia the t1000 will yes Lee a war movie ESCA [ __ ] elusive innovative if his daughter-in-law was considered guilty of something why should he treat her any different from anybody else maybe a garage donkey soviets cover sales or odd stephenie's blood relations didn't mean anything to him at that time Stalin's ruthlessness first in building an industrialized Soviet Union and then in allowing it to be destroyed would ultimately win the war one of the reasons that the USSR was successful was that they could afford to lose more tanks more aircraft and more men than the Germans afford to lose the Russians had huge industrial and human resources unavailable to Adolphe Hitler victory cost Stalin an estimated 26 million Russian lights but he had won the war and conquered Eastern Europe and his prestige and popularity had never been greater he had this vision and one has to say that he did turn the tank around the industrialization that took place over the 30 years that Stalin was in power was equivalent to about what took the rest of the Western world about 150 years the other thing he did was he brought education and training to Russia which had none he changed that when the war was over he was almost 70 he was now frail exhausted but even if his political energies were failing his paranoia was more powerful than ever [Applause] Starlin became more and more paranoid that people were plotting behind his back and it was really exponential I mean his health went as well he became increasingly sclerotic and he had very high blood pressure so his health wasn't his physical health wasn't good either but certainly this paranoia became more increased I mean to the point of a kind of psychotic paranoia really his family had started to disappear as early as 1938 but for them the terror never stopped [Music] it's very difficult to understand this and the family don't understand it still to this day because in 1947 he banished yevgenyevna his elder sister-in-law first of all to prison and then to the camps and then in 1948 anna sergeyevna his younger sister-in-law even his beloved svetlana the rest of her family came close to disappearing but i was accosted when swetlana said to him why have you imprisoned my hands he said don't play the Africa I'll imprison it normal for a father to say things like that to his daughter and finally kira herself my new pretty Grossman one day about 25 days later it was about 2 o'clock in the morning and I'd made sure I clocked her properly because I thought that they might be coming and I didn't want them to just get in there was a ring at the doorbell my little brother Sasha answered it he says there's three warrants for arrest they were pretending there were three just a frightened us it was rather confusing then Sasha searches Kira they've come for you hey Sasha give us a blip Rishi so this was an ultimate destruction of Stalin's family really and and they they remain there in solitary confinement and genius said artless that she's just survived because she thought of her children a lot she might have committed suicide or given up life in the prison yeah this guy's only measured the secret police said to me if you write to Starling he'll let you out and I said I'm offended I'm not going to write to Stalin and as it turned out that's what saved me because if anyone wrote to Stalin he put them in worse conditions that's the kind of man he was [Music] so now Stalin Lay Dying alone ganya sneh you sleep with the other shows now soon as for Sadie if my father had known that we were imprisoned I don't know what he would have said it's a lack of gratitude on Stanley's part he lived with the family he was hidden by the family and he married into the family but he said I'm a man of principles I've been told that your relatives are talking too much so I must put you all in prison so you'll be silent there [Music] mom afforded me ready but up my mother came in and said Stalin's let me out of prison and my older brother said cheerfully Stalin's dead he would never have let you out of prison on the day of Stalin's funeral millions of Russians wept and not just for the camera they grieved the passing of the greatest tyrant in his century of tyrants the man who had killed many of their friends their neighbors and even their families but they had seen how his cruel revolution had made their country great they recognized that Stalin was the last of the Russian Czars [Music] [Applause] [Music] keh keh could now groom so-so for his religious calling entry into the priesthood would admit so so to one of the educated elites in the Tsarist Empire so she bought him up with this feeling that he could do no wrong and of course a man you know who is hero worshipped by his mother believes he is a hero the Orthodox Church underpinned the authority of the imperial family its priests encouraged millions of peasants to revere the Tsar they urged them to accept the ties that bound them to the land as if they were still medieval serfs this was the prize which KJ had in mind for her only son who was already showing signs of talent this is an exceptional child and this super intelligence the super sensitivity of this damaged child when this was a boy who could learn who learned to read and write much earlier than other children and he you know other children it's sort of 8 or 9 were just perfecting their Georgian language for example but we know that he told he he told people about how he himself had learned four or five to read and write very well Sousa was brought up speaking Georgian his native language but Georgia was part of the Russian Empire and at school he was forced to read and write Russian it was also a land of factions and vendetta's and he grew up learning to be a fighter although he was the smallest boy in his year he was still the toughest and at the age of 14 he won a scholarship to the orthodox seminary in tbilisi the road from poverty to priesthood lay before him but it would be a harsh journey when he arrived there however the discipline imposed on him by his priests who were his teachers was very very severe including beatings including solitary but sources life was overshadowed by the violence of his father Vasari entourage Willie was a shoemaker and a drunk what little money he made he spent on alcohol and when he came home which was not often there was trouble his father beat his son viciously just to alleviate his own frustrations and in fact severely wounded Stalin at the age of seven in one of these beatings and the left elbow never recovered in fact you'll see in all the photographs of Stalin this withered shorter arm and which affected the mobility of the left hand as well so he had reasons be terrified of his father and I think this instilled in him the wish for revenge and never ever in his life to be the underdog that he must always be the top dog so so could so simply have disappeared into the squalor of 19th century torture but remarkably the young boy was prepped from obscurity by a powerful patron Yakko big Nitesh Willy was the answer to kaykai's prayers perhaps in more ways than one it was rumored that the wealthy merchant was actually sources true father the egg Nitesh village treated him and his mother as family and he would protect them all his life Jerusalem at Sultan his Godfather Yakko beg Natasha Bailey was our closest relative and I know that Stalin would run back after classes straight to them and they received him as a relative because he a Cobb was his Godfather [Music] father or Godfather Jakob spat renewed mint wheeze without service my father was called back to Moscow he arrived on the 18th of November he got a phone call and then he left immediately and never returned Vidia me at equational it was a terrible time everyone wanted to destroy everyone else there will be trails denunciations and such hatred that crossed all normal boundaries it seemed to me that he had some sort of hypnotic power he could influence people and he used fear all odds in these family relationships meant nothing to him at that time the opening of the Russian archives in recent years has finally revealed the story of the terror that Stalin created during his journey from extreme poverty to absolute power Stalin was a Georgian from the southern part of the Russian Empire the village where he was born Gouri was nearer to Baghdad that he was to sin Petersburg this was a wild country a land of tribalism and blood feuds he had been baptized yourself is a Leonov achoo gosh Willy his mother KK called him so so so so was born into extreme poverty the family rented a single room in a two room house three siblings had already died in infancy KK invested all of her hopes in her one surviving son she was a deeply religious woman and she dreamed that he might become a man of God usually in the early hours of March the second 1953 the most powerful man in the world Lay Dying alone he had suffered a stroke at least 12 hours before [Music] since shift Caminada usual nap his guards were worried but they did not dare to go into his bedroom [Music] how could a man worshipped by millions be left to lie helpless soaked in his own urine Masha Masha [Music] I need to be near to Asia studies Stalin had built an empire on a framework of terror justifying it in the name of a political faith and through it he willed his country his government his party and his family he had even terrorized the doctors he now needed so badly [Music] now there was no one left no wife child lover or friend who was brave enough to enter the private world of Joseph Stalin he had become a victim of his own terror [Music] at the time of his death Stalin was probably the best known man on earth his popularity far outstripped that of any other world leader in the Soviet Union his image was everywhere he had become a living icon the subject of a cult of personality a hundred and sixty million people felt they knew him personally that the man they knew was an invention the real man was a mass of contradictions a dictator whose position was unassailable yet who was haunted by paranoia Stalin used terror more effectively and scientifically than any other ruler his extreme faith in a political ideal would destroy tens of millions of lives yet his achievements would hold his people in all of him to the end although it were millions and millions of people who detested him there were equally millions and millions of people who loved and revered him and many further millions of people who detested him at the same time mourned him when he died it is tempting to dismiss Stalin as a psychopath unable to form normal human relationships with others but family photos show a warm gentle man surrounded by daughter Sons aunts and in-laws Stalin was a passionate husband a loving father and even a committed friend despite this most of the people in these photos would be destroyed by him